Improving the Light

Lighting is one of the most important aspects of any photograph. The illumination helps shape the scene and gives definition to the subject. It can render an image flat and two dimensional in low-contrast light, or it can carve out distinct depth and dimensionality with high-contrast light that lets the image pop off the page. In most cases, once you've pressed the shutter button and exposed the image, you have to live with the general quality of the light that the Fates gave you when you were making your photographs, as it determines overall structure of shadows, highlights, and dimensional depth for the elements in your image. You can't, for instance, take an image that was photographed in the low- contrast lighting of ...

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